ABOUT THIS ALBUM

Album Notes

Howard Garrett of the Orca Network (www.orcanetwork.org) says: \"I defy anyone to listen to (this album) for one minute and tell me orcas aren\'t doing some serious symbolic communication. When you hear these beautiful calls you absolutely know something is going on. ... I was truly blown away by it.\"

While our original Orca-stra album was intended as an educational tool to aid in awareness of the Orca species (A.K.A. Killer Whales), and included individual whale identifications, this second album is simply the Orcas in their natural environment. Inspiring, amazing variety of sounds and calls, once you\'ve become endeared to these creatures, you\'ll never be the same again. Most of the sounds are from the three resident pods in the Northwest, but there are also some rare recordings included of Transient Orcas. The Southern Residents featured on this album are a large extended Orca family, or clan, comprised of three pods: J, K, and L. Each pod uses a characteristic dialect of calls to communicate, with certain calls used in common between pods. The calls used by the Southern community are unlike calls made by any other community of Orcas.

Another goal in bringing awareness to the Orcas is to bring visibility to the plight of Lolita, cramped in a small tank in Florida. She has been in captivity since 1970, but still remembers the sounds and speaks the language of her L-Pod family here in the Northwest. Lolita is the last surviving Orca of 45 members of the Southern Resident community that were captured and delivered to marine parks between 1965 and 1973. Some of Lolita\'s family who were present at the capture are still alive, possibly even her mother. We support the campaign to return her to her home and her family.

LifeSounds donates a portion of the proceeds of each \"Orca-stra 2\" CD sale to support the work of Ken Balcomb and the Center for Whale Research in San Juan Island, Washington.